Steve Yun
Steve Yun — former president and current board member of TON Foundation, a blockchain technology specialist, founded TVM Ventures, a $100M venture capital fund in 2025 to develop TON ecosystem.
Steve has professional experience that spans various fields, including cryptocurrencies, education, and volunteer work.
Early Career and Projects
His career began with involvement in volunteer initiatives in Canada, where he organized educational events.
In 2012, Steve continued his volunteer work in Kashmir, India, coordinating various non-profit activities.
From 2012 to 2017, Steve Yun held leadership positions at InterCP’s headquarters, where he was responsible for organizing and coordinating international educational and volunteer programs. He worked on attracting participants for various events, including student clubs in the US and Canada, and delivered more than 100 lectures in 47 cities. Steve also oversaw volunteer missions in regions such as Kashmir and Syria, which allowed him to develop managerial skills and gain valuable experience in international coordination.
In 2017, Steve Yun actively entered the cryptocurrency field, taking the position of Chief Operating Officer at Koinvestor. In this role, he raised $50 million for nine crypto projects and played a crucial part in establishing strategic partnerships with leading technology companies. Steve gained extensive experience in the crypto industry, which proved beneficial for his future work on developing and implementing TON Blockchain.
Contribution to the Development of TON
Strategic Development of TON Ecosystem
From his early days at TON Foundation, Steve focused on attracting new developers, establishing partnerships with major market players, and introducing innovative technologies. He created a favorable environment for the development and implementation of decentralized applications (dApps) and services based on TON, which significantly contributed to expanding the platform’s capabilities.
Organization of Key Events
Under Steve Yun’s leadership, TON Foundation actively organized significant events aimed at promoting TON Blockchain. In 2022, TON Awards was held, celebrating the achievements of developers and ecosystem participants. In 2023, Steve Yun organized TON Gateway — an event that brought together leading experts and entrepreneurs to discuss the future of TON Blockchain and its application in various industries.
Innovative Programs and Initiatives
Steve Yun helped create programs aimed at stimulating the development of TON Ecosystem, including:
- New DeFi Liquidity Incentive Program 2023 — launched to boost TON DeFi ecosystem, attract new users and developers, and stimulate the growth and development of new decentralized applications.
- TVM Challenge 2023 — a contest aimed at improving and optimizing TON Virtual Machine (TVM). This initiative attracted talented developers from around the world to propose innovative solutions and enhance the TVM’s functionality. Steve Yun actively participated in the development of the contest concept, as well as in attracting sponsors and partners.
- Telegram Mini Apps Challenge 2023 — an initiative integrating TON Blockchain with the Telegram platform, which enabled the creation of a new generation of mini-apps using smart contracts. Steve Yun was one of the organizers of this contest, seeing immense potential in the integration of TON and Telegram.
Notable achievements included collaborations with Amazon Web Services and DWF Labs, which opened new opportunities for the development and scaling of applications based on TON.
Impact on the Community and Ecosystem
Under Steve Yun’s leadership, TON Foundation successfully created an active and dynamic community of developers, investors, and users. His efforts in promoting TON Blockchain attracted thousands of new participants to the project and helped develop numerous successful projects based on TON. Steve is also a strong advocate for decentralization, making blockchain more accessible and transparent to a broad audience.
Steve Yun remains an important leader in the world of blockchain technologies. His work has led to significant achievements, and TON Foundation team continues to make substantial contributions to the development of TON, working on new initiatives and programs that strengthen the blockchain’s position on a global level.
While Steve has never been particularly public, he is deeply involved in the community and has a direct impact on its development.
In addition to his former role as President of TON Foundation, he has actively contributed to the Ecosystem as a private investor, investing heavily in NFT to support this emerging market.
TVM Ventures Fund
In early 2025, Steve Yun launched a venture fund called TVM Ventures to organize investments in DeFi, PayFi, infrastructure and security projects on TON platform.
In interview with The Daily TON, Steve said that the Fund was created from his personal funds and an investment from one of the Toncoin miners. Unlike TON Ventures, TVM Ventures is focused on expanding TON as a global financial network, emphasizing p2p payments and interactions via Telegram. The name TVM Ventures relates to the principle of «Time Value of Money», emphasizing the importance of the time value of money. Steve also explained that his resignation as President of TON Foundation was not related to the launch of the Fund, but was necessary to improve management efficiency.
The Fund almost immediately partnered with Trail of Bits, a company that has specialized in security at DeFi since 2022, to work on security. In its first month of investment rounds, the fund raised a total of about $6M for the memecoin platform Memes Lab, the lending protocol Factorial Finance and the stableswap protocol Torch Finance.